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User blog:Brainwasher5/Thoughts on trade--Pharaoh
This is for writing down all the notes that may fall outside the realm of what's appropriate for a wiki page regarding trade in Pharaoh. There can only be a finite amount of trade caravans or ships that can be present on the map at any given time. This means three things: 1) A city can only trade so much a year. For the purposes of trading, the larger a map is and the further away entry and exit points are from each other, the less you can trade. Earlier maps are smaller and feature less trade so it's possible to hit quotas each year. For later maps this is simply impossible, so to maximize trade income it becomes necessary to focus on more profitable goods. 2) To maximize trade, try to keep all importing/exporting storage yards as close as possible to the straight line between the entry and exit points. This allows caravans to enter and leave in the shortest time possible. 3) Only open trade routes that you need. The more routes are open, the less each individual city can trade with you per year. What should be traded depends on a variety of factors: unit price of the goods, how easily they can be produced, what quantities they are being sold in, the labor gone into making the goods. Broadly speaking, the best to worst goods to sell (assuming they can all be bought and sold in equal quantities) are: #1: Raw materials that sell for high prices. High returns per unit of labor and no processing step required. Copper and Wood (and Gems, somewhat) fall into this category. #2: Processed goods that sell for high prices, with cheaply imported or locally available raw materials: These require either more labor or the purchasing of raw materials, but are worth it as the margins are large enough. Papyrus, Linen, Luxury Goods (if gems are locally produced), Bricks (if straw and clay can be locally produced) and Beer, somewhat fall into this category. #3: Finished goods with less impressive margins. Pottery, bricks (if neither raw material is locally made), luxury goods (if gems are imported) and weapons (if neither are imported) fall in this category. #4: Non-food raw materials with small margins. Various stone types, reeds, clay and straw. This is merely to allow traders to continue buying stuff from your city that you don't need; start exporting this toward the end of the year if your other options have reached their quotas/are exhausted. #5: Food. Food is a crucial resource for your population so it's usually a bad idea to sell it. Even with a well-fed option there is almost inevitably a better export option out there due to the extremely low export price of food. Nuances to the rules: 1. Bricks are an interesting case. In later maps, bricks are needed to build most monuments and are therefore not a good export option early on in maps (selling them would usually decrease monument construction speed). However as monuments are completed a surplus of bricks may make an excellent export option. On the other hand, high-end goods that are of no use to citizens in the early game but are requirements for later housing upgrades (such as linen and papyrus) are great early game export options but later may hinder growth due to it competing with housing. 2. Raw materials that sell for low prices may still be a good export option in the early game, where the population is still small and thus not many can be spared for making both raw materials AND finished goods. Limestone on Itjawy is a good example: while it doesn't sell for much, it requires not much labor. Category:Blog posts